


My infatuation is translating to another form of what you call it?

by RedAlpaca



Category: Hotline Miami (Video Games)
Genre: Ash is tired, Canon-Typical Violence, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Tony is dumb and unaware of feelings, protective!tony, the others eat some chips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 14:17:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15996944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedAlpaca/pseuds/RedAlpaca
Summary: “This means nothing,” his voice, like red velvet, finally reaches him, the words at odds with the way his calloused hands cradle his face with a feather-light hold reserved for delicate bone china.-Ash and Tony are just friends-with-benefits, and any other emotion besides lust is out of bounds.Or, well, theyshouldbe.





	My infatuation is translating to another form of what you call it?

**Author's Note:**

> I went on this prompt site that just generates random words and I picked the first six words that popped up. At first they were all going to be separate tiny bits of writing, but I decided to see if I could somehow mash them all together to get something resembling a (short) story. 
> 
> (This is the site if anyone wants to know, it’s just like any other word generator I guess, but it’s got some funky words in there: http://www.rangen.co.uk/writing/promptgen.php) 
> 
> Title is lyrics from the song See You Again by Tyler, the Creator.

** Desperation. **

It should leave little dips on his soft inner lip, he muses, a perfect fit for those incisors. He expects it to sting, or for it to be accompanied by the dull ache of bruising. It should have him tensing with pain, wincing, hissing at the first bite. It’s yet to come, of course, because it would be far too cliche to say that Tony kisses like he fights, impulsive, reckless, rough, with intent to hurt—no, he kisses with a sweetness befitting of a gentleman.

“This means nothing,” his voice, like red velvet, finally reaches him, the words at odds with the way his calloused hands cradle Ash's face with a feather-light hold reserved for delicate bone china, “right?”

But the sobering words still shake Ash from his own mind, wedging themselves between him and his thoughts, pulling him up from where he had been drowning in the feeling of warm, dry lips against his, and he replies with a soft, “yeah, I know”, because what else can he say? 

He feels the remaining drops of adrenaline sizzle beneath his skin, unmasking the deep-seated fatigue that has soaked well into his bones. Aware of just how exhausted he is, he closes his eyes, sighing into the dip of skin just behind a collarbone. And suddenly he just wants to sleep, he’s too tired for this. 

Tired _of_ this. 

So he pulls away, and apologises—very briefly, says he’s feeling like death and he’s going to sleep now. His voice is barely above a whisper, almost inaudible as it melts into the still air of the room like a wisp of smoke.

“Oh c’mon,” Tony urges, “Ash, you can’t leave me hanging like this.” But Ash is steadfast and the hand curled around his bicep finally loosens when Ash doesn’t turn easily in its grasp.

Ash doesn’t go to sleep, he closes his eyes and waits until the first sliver of sunlight drips over the edge of Tony’s windowsill. 

And then he leaves.

 

 

** Mortality. **

The first time he’s faced with it, he tastes iron on his tongue before he even starts bleeding. That empty, yet pungent smell of pure trauma that floods your sinuses when your head receives a critical blow and you can _feel_ your brain collide with the interior of your skull. He barely registers the way his shoulder blades crunch against the concrete as he drops to the floor, the way the pain fucking shoots up his spine, straight from his tail bone right up to his neck. With his head on the ground, the thick warmth of his blood starts to pool inside his mask, creeping along the side of his face. His head throbs with every heart beat, a loud rhythm that pulses against the torn, tender skin of his temple. It hurts, goddamn, it fucking _hurts_. 

Suddenly, he’s not as invincible as he’d originally thought. 

A weight presses down on his chest, heavy on his lungs, and man, he can’t—he can’t _breathe_ , can’t seem to suck in enough air, and it just _sits_ there in his trachea, never _quite_ reaching the lungs where it’s _supposed to go_. The knee digs into his sternum, the pressure like a crater in his thorax, and he looks up, dazed, can see two—no, wait, just one—man brandishing a crowbar, and Tony thinks, “yup, alright, I guess this is it”. 

He’s not welcoming the idea of dying right now, but he’s familiar with it—has considered this very moment many times and imagined countless scenarios of how this story of his is going to end. He’s played around with it in his head, like hard candy in his mouth. In this case, it’s less acceptance and more resignation. It’s a shit way to go, really, it's quite anticlimactic and a lot less dramatic than he'd liked. 

The man lifts up the crowbar, far above his head, holding it with one hand, while the other presses down hard on Tony’s shoulder. Tony scrunches his eyes shut and grits his teeth.

And then there’s a loud sound, but Tony doesn’t feel any pain—not yet—oh? He can breathe again.

Maybe this is what it’s like to die. 

He’s almost too afraid to open his eyes to see…what? 

Blackness? The fourth dimension? The fiery depths of hell?

An angel? 

“Tony,” he hears a voice, and he knows it, he knows it very well. He feels two hands on his shoulders drag him up so that he’s sitting upright, “Tony get the fuck up and—oh _shit_ that’s a lot of blood.” He feels the hot blood that had been collecting in his mask run down his neck to soak into the collar of his shirt.

There’s a corpse to his left, its legs still partly on top of Tony’s. A stagnant puddle of red is beginning to form around the head, and Tony looks back and there’s a swan crowded into his personal space, crouching down to pull his mask off and inspect the wound on the side of his head. He flinches at the drag of rubber over his injury, the pain still raw and pounding against his skin.

“Fuck dude, that looks—we need to do something about that, like, yesterday. Can you even walk?” 

He takes a few breaths, feeling his alveoli pop open and his chest expand again. 

He nods. 

 

 

** Fury. **

It never used to be like this. At the flash of steel and when the small beads of scarlet soar through the air before crashing against the wall, leaving cast-offs on the dull grey, the harsh drop of his stomach is a foreign sensation, it almost makes him nauseous.

Shit, he thinks, there’s so much of it. 

Of Ash’s blood.

That’s Ash’s blood. 

He sees Ash clutching his side, spitting out a single word, _“fuck”_ , as he stumbles a little, dropping his gun with a clatter so he can place both hands on the large wound in his side that is rapidly losing blood. He sees the way Ash’s knees buckle under him a little as a wave of pain rolls through his body but he also sees the defiance in Ash’s eyes, like he won’t give the man the satisfaction of seeing an ounce of fear or vulnerability on his face. He sees the man advance towards Ash, while Alex is preoccupied with fending off assailants of her own. 

And then all he sees is red. 

Getting from point A, here, to point B, there, he doesn’t register it. What his brain _does_ register, however, is the ripple of movement beneath his fingertips, when the carpal bones grind together as he twists, like opening a jar, straining against the ligaments trying to hold them all together. They stretch, and then with an ear piercing shriek, coarse and loud as it tears its way out of the man’s throat, they finally rip. 

The knife clangs to the ground next to Ash's gun on the concrete, followed by a hand with a wet splat. The man is screaming, and screaming, and screaming, and hyperventilating, shaking as he stares at the mangled stump of his wrist with wide, bloodshot eyes. 

Tony reaches over and places his fingers in the man’s mouth, against each set of teeth. There’s a split second where he can see the man is about to clamp down, so he wastes no time; he wrenches his hands apart with as much strength as he can channel. It’s not easy, there’s definitely resistance, but the mandible still manages to partially separate with a dull, wet, sickening _crack_. He manages to only break off one side, and so it hangs loosely to the left, strings of bloodied muscle and tendon dangling uselessly from the right, and the body collapses next to his detached hand.

And then he’s there, pressing a wide palm over the hands already on the gash. His fingers are slippery over Ash’s, already wet with his blood, and he grabs the piece of cloth handed to him by Corey. He rucks up Ash’s shirt and secures a knot around Ash so that the cloth sits over the wound just below Ash’s last left rib, somehow managing to wrap the entire length around the circumference of Ash’s torso. Tony tries not to react too much when Ash cries out in pain, swears at him, calls him a motherfucking son of bitch, or when his hand shoots up and grips at the skin on the back of Tony’s neck, sinking his nails in deep as Tony cinches the knot. He then also attempts to not freak out because the cloth is already soaked through by the time he hauls Ash to his feet. There's so much turmoil stewing inside Tony, all the stress and adrenaline and worry and fear and he just doesn't know where to store it. So he takes it out on the closest person. 

“You fucking _idiot_ ,” he fumes, when Ash winces at the rough handling, “why the _fuck_ did you let that asshole stab you?” 

“Tony.” Mark says his name like a warning as he moves to support Ash on one side, winding an arm around his waist, careful to not put pressure against the side with a gigantic slash in it. 

“Oh, you know,” Ash begins to retort, even when he’s losing a fair amount of blood, even when the cloth becomes heavy and saturated with red, “I _let_ him stab me, because I just thought it’d be some _real_ good fucking fun.”

 

 

** Safety. **

“You got real mad about that, remember?” Ash says, voice quiet and light, when he feels Tony’s thumb brush against the raised skin, moving along the pale scar following the gentle curve of his rib.

Tony thrusts a little harder, “Yeah, yeah I was,” he replies dumbly, mind unable to articulate a proper response when all he can think about is the tight heat around his cock. Ash is currently lying on top of his kitchen counter with Tony buried inside him, and the height of the counter makes it a tad awkward. They weren’t even cooking before this happened, in fact, they weren’t in the kitchen for any particular reason other than, “bed outdated, couch overrated, long have I waited, counter sex activated”, as Ash had eloquently requested with his arms draped over Tony’s shoulders. Tony had gotten a good laugh out of that, running out of breath before grabbing Ash under his thighs and all but throwing him on his back onto the marble. 

He leans down to press a gentle kiss into Ash’s neck. He feels his own hair flutter over the shell of his ear where Ash’s mouth is, with every puff of air that Tony fucks out of him.

“I wonder why?” Ash asks, and Tony wishes he would just stop talking and focus his energy into wrapping those gloriously long legs around him instead, “Were you worried about me?” Ash prods. Tony clenches his fists on either side of Ash’s head.

“No,” Tony immediately denies, pushing the words out from behind his gritted teeth, “I wasn’t _worried_ about you, I was pissed off.” 

After a brief moment of silence, Ash just replies with a simple “okay”. His voice is breathless and so warm on Tony’s ear.

Tony closes his mouth over Ash’s, so that Ash doesn’t ask any more questions and he doesn’t have to answer them with lies that burn through his oesophagus and make him feel sick. The kiss softens Ash underneath him, makes him docile, and he opens himself up further for Tony.

—

When Ash is asleep, Tony doesn’t let himself close, even though it’s all he wants to just feel Ash's heart beat against his own. To know that he’s here.

He wants to keep Ash safe, but not from the guns and the knives and the bats, not from the violence that follows them wherever they go—no—the violence that they _chase_.

Tony is brutality and suffering. He’s aimlessness, an unemployed nobody heading down the path of self-destruction, with a future that wavers in and out of existence. His hands carry with them the scent of a crime scene, of gore and cruelty and hopelessness—so to place them over the soft slope of Ash’s hips, the smooth skin of his throat, the silk of his inner thighs…

Ash isn’t an innocent by any means—far from it, in fact—but to Tony, it remains as desecration. 

 

 

** Risk. **

“I love you.” 

It spills from between his lips before he even realises he’s opened his mouth. Hears the words and—oh, fuck, that’s his own voice. Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

They’re not submerged in the heat of the moment, nor fuelled by adrenaline. 

They’re just standing outside the convenience store, leaning against the glass, waiting for the others to make their purchases. The only light is from inside the store, artificial and blinding, where Mark is counting coins to pay for his three bags of Doritos while Corey and Alex fight over who gets the last tube of Pringles available. There’s crickets in the distance, singing from somewhere along the line of silhouetted trees across the road. Ash is drinking beer and Tony is smoking a cigarette. They hadn’t said a single word until now. 

That is, until Tony opened his big fucking mouth.

In the silence that ensues, a surge of anxiety rushes to his head and then he’s feeling a little dizzy, face hot, God, it’s stifling here isn’t it? But they’re outside, so it’s probably just him that’s feeling it and—and he’s going to take it back now, he’s going to take it back and they can pretend he never said anything, ignore it, act like it never happened.

But those green eyes don’t let him, and the words remain stuck inside his throat.

“Don’t fuck with me, Tony,” Ash finally responds after what feels like an aeon. His voice is surprisingly level, but the way the muscles of his jaw twitch doesn’t escape Tony. There’s something akin to anger simmering below the surface and Tony wants to lean in and smother it, suffocate it.

This is God’s way of giving him a second chance. 

Do you mean it? 

He does. 

Because Ash isn’t shoving him away, he doesn’t hear outright rejection. He’s hearing hesitation, he’s hearing doubt, but he’s not hearing rejection. Like Tony’s got Ash teetering on the edge of a precipice and Ash is wondering if Tony’s going to just push him off or jump with him. So Tony makes his decision, even though he doesn’t know if he’s misinterpreting the way Ash worries his bottom lip, or the way he doesn’t stop looking at Tony. Maybe he’s got it completely wrong, and Ash is about to punch him in the teeth and tell him to piss right off. 

Maybe. 

But he must have taken too long to reply because Ash sighs, like he’s annoyed or fed up, and then he finally looks away and he’s pushing off the window, making his way to the rubbish bin, dragging his feet with every step, downing his can of beer along the way, away from Tony, and if Tony doesn’t fucking do this now then—

“I’m not—” he tries to call out, and he cringes at the way his voice sounds so quiet and unconvincing, so he clears his throat and tries again, “I’m not fucking with you, Ash.” 

Ash doesn’t move for a while. He’s still holding his empty can of beer, and Tony waits for Ash to throw his can away so he can come back and talk, watches him massage the bridge of his nose between his thumb and his index finger. 

Ash turns to face Tony. 

 

 

** Manners. **

Not much changes after that day. They don’t really discuss matters any further and things return to normal, more or less.

They still storm drug dens and gang hideouts, leaving piles of fetid, rotting corpses behind, floors slick with blood and other foul bodily fluids, like the vomitus that sometimes spouts from the neck during a decapitation (it doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens, and it’s always a little bit unpleasant when it catches you off-guard).

So yeah, things are pretty much the same. 

Except now, Ash says _“please”_ in this wanton and resolve-shattering fashion that is totally and completely _unlike_ Ash whenever Tony kisses him a little too hard, or pushes his thigh between Ash’s legs, grinding against him with enough pressure that it has him shivering and weak at the knees. Tony is always all too happy to oblige.

And also now, Ash hooks his pinky finger around Tony’s when they’re sitting in the back of the van, sweat dripping down their necks, dried blood stains on their already filthy clothes. Tony doesn’t know if it’s too bold of him to rest his head against Ash’s perfect pillow-height shoulder in front of all the others, just so he can catch some shut-eye, but Ash doesn’t say a word. If anything he shuffles a little, adjusts his seating position so that Tony isn’t having to lean so far. When they reach Tony’s place, Ash shakes his shoulder a little, gently jostling Tony awake. If the others take notice of the lack of traded barbs, or the fact that Ash’s hand seems to chase after Tony’s when he exits the van, they don’t say a single word about it.

**Author's Note:**

> it’s probably not that easy to rip off a man’s hand with all the tendons and ligaments (or his jaw) but if tony can get instakills with a single punch then i’m sure he can handle a lil bit of hand (and jaw) ripping. i tried doing it to a kid in primary school once (the hand-ripping) when he threw bark in my face but i got told off before i got anywhere close to succeeding.


End file.
